Page 73 of The Compound

She pulled the bottle gently from me. There was maybe a fifth left. “That’s enough,” she said. “I know it’s hard. But we need to save it.”

“Until when?”

“Tomorrow they’ll either do the task or decide to go home,” she said.“One, or both. I’m betting Andrew is holding out on the producers stepping in?” I nodded. “I almost feel bad for him.”

I was panting. My face felt numb. My hands were shockingly cold.

“Are you okay?” I said. “Why didn’t you come into the house? I thought you would freeze to death out here.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “It was a long night, but it was fine.”

“Becca, this is ridiculous,” I said. “Let’s go in and do the task. It’s freezing out here. You can’t stay here again. They’ll lose now, easily.”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “You can have more water, then go to sleep. In the morning, you’ll be in better shape, and so will I. I’ll sleep inside tonight, maybe in the back room, and we’ll see whether they choose to do the challenge or just leave.”

I listened for the sound of footsteps, or some animal or beast. Becca looked calm enough. Her face was very white, and there was a smear of chocolate around her mouth.

“How old are you, Becca?”

“Seventeen,” she said, and then: “No. Eighteen. I turned eighteen a few weeks ago. I lied to get on the show. Well, everyone lies a little to get on the show, don’t they? I don’t think it matters much anyway, the difference of a couple of weeks.”

“I suppose so.”

“Time feels different here, doesn’t it? I don’t know if I’ll go back to the old way of living by every minute and hour, will you? I know enough to get by, just by the place of the sun in the sky and the waxing of the moon.”

It was the most I had ever heard Becca speak, though we had spent weeks together cleaning the kitchen.

“Didn’t you lie, to get on the show?” she askedme.

“Not really,” I said. “I probably made myself seem more interesting, but I think everyone probably does that. I guess I lied about having more hobbies and stuff. At home, I used to just stay in bed all day on my days off. I left that out.”

“I almost exclusively lied,” she said. “I don’t even like boys.”

“Why are you here?” I asked. “Why did you come on the show?”

She was quiet for a few moments; there was only the sound of ourbreathing and the soft whisper of leaves moving about our feet. “I used to make fun of the people who came on the show. My friends and I, we’d laugh at how vapid everyone was. The things that people will do for the sake of something pretty. I guess I came on as a joke. I thought I could go home and do an exposé, maybe start a career in journalism or something. I suppose it was just as vain to think that I could gain attention by getting cast and then criticizing the show as it would be to come here looking for genuine fame. But I didn’t realize how—immersive it would be. I never particularly cared about the prizes. But Tom—I couldn’t understand how everyone was all right with him still being in the compound, how we let him order us around, coming when he and Andrew called, like dogs. I wanted to humiliate him—but it became more difficult, when we became bedmates. He was so close all the time, and I knew how quickly he could become violent. I’d wake in the night and find him staring at me. Sometimes he’d stroke my face. When he was punished—when he was burned in the hot tub, and then when the shed burned—Ithought that would make me happy; I thought that would be enough. But I don’t want to go home before he does. I don’t want to go home; not while he’s still here, collecting rewards. I want him banished in the most humiliating manner possible.”

We were silent for a short time. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I came on the show?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t need you to explain it. You’re the kind of girl the show was made for.”

Before I could register what was happening, I was being pressed against the ground, a hand on my throat. The world went white. I thought I was dying: I screamed and felt relieved to hear my voice. Not dead then, but I was choking. My brain told me that I could overpower Becca, even if she’d had more water: she was a tiny thing, but my body was panicking, flailing. I clutched at the hand that was struggling to find the right grip on my throat, and felt hair along the fingers, a signet ring on the pinky finger.

Tom loomed over me, one hand on my neck, the other holding Becca down, her face in the dirt.

“I knew it,” he said. “I knew it, I knew it.”

Becca managed to twist her head. She wasn’t looking at him; she was looking at me. She was mouthing something, but it was too dark to see what. I saw Tom’s hand move backward, and then the sound of a sharpcrack,and Becca’s head smacked sharply against the ground. His hold on me loosened, and I scrambled forward toward the water hidden in the bush. I heard Becca make some sound behind me, and I thought that she must have fought back in some way, and then I had it: I had the water, and I was getting to my feet, clutching it to my chest. Tom was on me in a second, pinning me to the ground again, his knees on my chest, the air whooshing out of me. I could breathe, but I thought my ribs would break if I drew in another breath.

He opened the bottle, his hands fumbling, and tilted his head up toward the sky, his mouth stretched obscenely open, and emptied the contents of the bottle over his face. It rained down his face, into his mouth, into his eyes, and he made a keening sound as the drops hit his tongue, writhing like a snake in his mouth. Some of the water fell down onto me, and even though I was struggling to breathe under Tom’s massive weight, still my body cried out to try and catch some of the liquid that was falling. I was thirsty, so thirsty, and the bottle was empty now; Tom, emitting wild gasps, had finished it all. I rolled him off me in a huge lurch, and he didn’t fightit.

I grabbed Becca, pulling her to her feet with what little strength I had, and ran down the path, stumbling left and right. Becca was the only one who knew the maze, but she was running wildly next to me, jerking us down different pathways, glancing back every couple of seconds. I didn’t know if she was leading us out of the maze, or leading us farther in, or if she was running in a blind panic, her only goal to flee from Tom.

I glanced over my shoulder; the moon had come out from behind a cloud, and a distant ray dimly lit the path behind us. Tom wasn’t anywhere in sight, but there was a splotchy, dark trail behind us. I stopped and looked at Becca. There was a steady gush of blood running from her nose and onto the ground. I could actually hear the drops hitting the dirt. I pulled off my jumper and threw it at her. “You need to stop the blood,” I said. “He’ll find us.”

She held the jumper to her face. Her eyes swung wildly around. Therewas something about the look on her face—that raw fear—and I wondered what had passed between them in the weeks that they had been sharing a bed.

“They can’t let us die,” I said, but my voice shook. Becca looked at me for a beat, then at the maze beyondus.

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